“There’s a plaster for you, Holt. You don’t look very pretty, but it may do you good.”
“Ouch! it stinks!” yelled Holt.
“So does your reputation,” laughed Jack. “One will act as a counter irritant to the other. And like curses like, you know. That’s the new school of medicine. Who got up this little scheme to waylay me?”
“Pete Herring,” muttered Holt. “I had nothing to do with it. I was just going to catch rabbits.”
“With a mask? H’m! you are ashamed to look a rabbit in the face, are you? Well, you are homely enough to give a young rabbit nervous prostration, so I can’t blame you for that.”
“I didn’t have nothing to do with it,” said Holt, trying to wipe the mud from his face and making it worse.
“How about the telephone?” asked Jack. “Where was Herring when I called him up?”
“On the switch. How did you know it was him?”
“There are some voices that are so disagreeable that you can actually smell them, Holt. Herring’s is one. Then I did not get the station at all? I thought not.”
“No, you didn’t, but if you knew it was Herring, what did you want to come for? That was foolish.”